The underling who's much smarter, more efficient and more industrious than their (usually totally incompetent) boss, and is the one actually responsible for anything that gets done in the workplace. Despite the fact that they work their butt off for little pay and no credit, this person is generally pretty happy with the way things are. If they or the incompetent boss aren't the lead character, they'll often use their skills and position in order to help the lead character out. If their incompetent boss is the Big Bad, they're his right hand and act in the opposite manner to The Starscream even though they may have plenty of motivation to be one. They are often known for appearing right before they are called, always with whatever they were going to be asked to bring.

The greatest danger to the Hyper-Competent Sidekick is having a boss who is toostupid. Witness the relationship between Blackadder and Prince George in the third series of that show. The Prince is easily manipulated, but his sheer idiocy is forever landing himself and his butler into incredibly dangerous or difficult situations.

When the Hyper-Competent Sidekick wields more actual power than his or her boss, it's an Almighty Janitor. If The Dragon is a Hyper-Competent Sidekick who is more of a threat than the actual Big Bad and has little to no respect for the boss, then he's the Dragon-in-Chief.

When the boss is competent in his own right and/or when the sidekick actually enjoys being the underling, it's a Chessmaster Sidekick.

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Fan Fiction

Make a Wish gives us Henchgirl, who works 'for' the Professor. (They actually both have doctorates; they flipped a coin to see who would be the Professor and who would be the henchman, because in their viewsomeone has to be the henchman.)

Played with in another Sherlockian example, A Study in Regret. MaryWatson plays the Hypercompetent Sidekick to Inspector Lestrade, proving herself to be very handy in languages and other areas. In this sense, she plays the trope straight, especially as Lestrade is The Hero. However, the men definitely defer to Mary "Pintsized Powerhouse" Watson as the real authority.

Monkey King Sun Wukong from Journey to the West is a nearly invincible god who swears loyalty to the very gullible human monk Xuanzang, and ends up kicking the asses of most of the monsters and demons Xuanzang encounters on his journey.

Newspaper Comics

Dilbert: Asok the intern is not only one of the best engineers in the office, he also possesses amazing mental powers, including pyrokinesis and shapeshifting. Despite his prowess, he is paid the least, works in an eighth-sized cubicle, and is rarely allowed to leave.

Mephisto claims that this was common for the Captain Patriotic / Kid Sidekick pairings that popped up all over the place during World War II, mainly because the 'superheroes' were usually the result of Super Soldier experiments performed by 'eccentric' but patriotic researchers under the control of the military. The 'kid' sidekicks were actually their handlers, and older than they appeared, as the whole purpose of setting these 'flag heroes' loose on criminals and saboteurs was to see if the test subjects could handle the stress of combat and covert ops without going berserk.note This is a direct reference to the way Marvel Comics retconned the relationship between Captain America and Bucky Barnes.

"Commander" Jeremy Wickstrom in Chad Vader. Although he is a little off as well.

In Red vs. Blue, while Church is the leader of the Blue Team, Tucker has far more plot influence and action the instant he picks up his sword. The only thing stopping him from stealing the spotlight is that Church keeps story focus. This eventually gets deconstructed. Tucker gets promoted to an alien ambassador while Church gets sent to a backwater canyon in the middle of nowhere. But it turns out that there's a good reason for that...

Yorks the goat-slug in Broken Quest is this to Big Bad Sid. A prime example in episode 3, when Yorks thinks a plan to set the heroes against centaurs and get them killed was a failure. It was a complete success as far as Sid was concerned, however, because his only real objective was to see if he could get the heroes to kill their own horses to substitute their hooves for the centaur hooves they were tasked to get.

Yorks: Wait. You set up a fake boat business. Had me run it for a week, in disguise, to lead them to a sacred centaur hunting grounds all to... (calming breath) trick them into killing useless horses they already hated.Sid: Holy crap! It sounds even more gi-nees when you say it. Magic mirror, fat lady taking a bath. Yorks: But we helped them across the river! They're moving faster now on foot! what was the point of any of this?! Sid (No longer paying attention to Yorks): Oh yes, that's nice.

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